"Fritz Leiber - Best of Fritz Leiber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Yet at the same time Joe knew they were just trimmings. It was the man in black, their master, who was
the deadly one, the kind of man you knew at a glance you couldnтАЩt touch and live. If without asking you
merely laid a finger on his sleeve, no matter how lightly and respectfully, an ivory hand would move
faster than thought and youтАЩd be stabbed or shot. Or maybe just the touch would kill you, as if every
black article of his clothing were charged from his ivory skin outwards with a high-voltage, high-
amperage ivory electricity. Joe looked at the shadowed face again and decided he wouldnтАЩt care to try it.

For it was the eyes that were the most impressive feature. All great gamblers have dark-shadowed deep-
set eyes. But this oneтАЩs eyes were sunk so deep you couldnтАЩt even be sure you were getting a gleam of
them. They were inscrutability incarnate. They were unfathomable. They were like black holes.



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 best of fritz leiber

But all this didnтАЩt disappoint Joe one bit, though it did terrify him considerably. On the contrary, it made
him exult. His first suspicion was completely confirmed and his hope spread into full flower.

This must be one of those really big gamblers who hit Ironmine only once a decade at most, come from
the Big City on one of the river boats that ranged the watery dark like luxurious comets, spouting long
thick tails of sparks from their sequoia-tall stacks with top foliage of curvy-snipped sheet iron. Or like
silver space-liners with dozens of jewel-flamed jets, their portholes atwinkle like ranks of marshalled
asteroids.

For that matter, maybe some of those really big gamblers actually came from other planets where the
nighttime pace was hotter and the sporting life a delirium of risk and delight.

Yes, this was the kind of man Joe had always yearned to pit his skill against. He felt the power begin to
tingle in his rock-still fingers, just a little.

Joe lowered his gaze to the crap table. It was almost as wide as a man is tall, at least twice as long,
unusually deep, and lined with black, not green, felt, so that it looked like a giantтАЩs coffin. There was
something familiar about its shape which he couldnтАЩt place. Its bottom, though not its sides or ends, had
a twinkling iridescence, as if it had been lightly sprinkled with very tiny diamonds. As Joe lowered his
gaze all the way and looked directly down, his eyes barely over the table, he got the crazy notion that it
went down all the way through the world, so that the diamonds were the stars on the other side, visible
despite the sunlight there, just as Joe was always able to see the stars by day up the shaft of the mine he
worked in, and so that ├╝ a cleaned-out gambler, dizzy with defeat, toppled forward into it, heтАЩd fall
forever, towards the bottom-most bottom, be it Hell or some black galaxy. JoeтАЩs thoughts swirled and he
felt the cold, hard-fingered clutch of fear at his crotch. Someone was crooning beside him, тАЬCome on,
Big Dick.тАЭ

Then the dice, which had meanwhile passed to the Big Mushroom immediately on his right, came to rest
near the tableтАЩs center, contradicting and wiping out JoeтАЩs vision. But instantly there was another oddity
to absorb him. The Ivory dice were large and unusually round-cornered with dark red spots that gleamed
like real rubies, but the spots were arranged hi such a way that each face looked like a miniature skull.
For instance, the seven thrown just now, by which the Big Mushroom to his right had lost his point,
which had been ten, consisted of a two with the spots evenly spaced towards one side, like eyes, instead